How Many Pounds to Go?

This was my first blog post ever back in 2006. How is it that I still struggle with the very same things today? I still fight the weight battle. I still struggle to work out. I still have an aversion to the scale and to doctors and nurses. I still look to God everyday for it all. I still slip up on these things and beat myself up about it.

Tell me if you can relate.

How Many Pounds to Go?

Back in January I had to go to the doctor. Now, I can face major surgery, or minor surgery, or even needles with barely a blink of an eyeball. The doctor can be named Frankenstein, and I probably would ask how his grandpa is doing. But take me down that long, dark corridor to the scales, and you might as well just cut an artery for me.

"9-1-1? We got an emergency here at Dr. Darkkillme's office. Yeah, bring your heavy duty gurney and the ambulance with heavy shocks. She's out cold. On the floor. Bleeding and stuff. Fat."

I have had four kids, fer crying out loud. Don't weigh me! What for?? I avoided the doctor's office for five years merely because I didn't want to get on the scales.

Anyway, in January I had to go to the doctor. It wasn't any big deal. In a month I was over the surgery and back to whatever setting of normal I can manage. On the way home from my follow up check, I pulled into a local gym and walked in. I think I was crying and mumbling, because immediately this kid, who looked to be the age of one of my boys, walked up and asked if he could help me. (Yeah, buddy. Help me pull the plug.) His name is Josh.

I mumbled some more about weighing on scales and about weighing the most I had ever weighed in my life, and something about how I used to be a P.E. teacher, and could run circles around Mary Lou Retton. He smiled and bobbed his curly head and pulled out contracts, saying something about,"I've seen worse. You're not so bad."

Soon I was figuring out what a transporter was and flirting with the old guys who worked out on the weight machines ahead of me. Josh would smile big and bright and ask me how I was doing.

"How do ya think I'm doing? I hate working out!"

And he would smile and say, "Hey, you're looking great! (for an old lady.)" I could hear the parenthetic phrase in my ears.

I counted out popcorn for my snack. I ate one square of chocolate and ate salad until I had nightmares of being chased by a Giant Spinach Leaf with Tomato. (And I used to like tomatoes.) Doing a low glycemic diet, I was told my cravings would go away. Yeah, they go away. When you finally are so thin, you don't need a coffin for your funeral. Just put me in an envelope and mail me to God.

(Potato chips call me every night at 10 p.m. just in case I have forgotten them.)

Well, believe it or not, I lost 20 lbs. I look at myself in that mirror that lies to me and think I need to lose 20 more. My boys tell me maybe 5 more. I'm not sure what motivates them to suggest that number. Probably they are as tired of my diet and exercise routine as I am. They whisper to each other about white bread and chips and real Coke, casting me sidelong looks.

As far as I can tell, being thinner, like I used to be, just makes me more easily depressed. And what is more important than losing the weight, is keeping it off until I go back to the doctor in January of 2007,so I can show a nurse ,who probably wasn't even there before, that I'm lighter on that scale.

One thing dieting and exercise has taught me: I hate it. Forever. Stick a carrot in your ear, because I'm really grumpy now.

2010 Note to this post:

I need to re-lose those pounds. Do you think maybe this is my natural weight and it's unnatural for me to be super thin? I am old now. Surely age counts as a pass.

Try On the Jacket

When I got up this morning, I knew it was going to be "one of those days" where I have a bad attitude. I went to bed last night with a split little toenail (I barely have a toenail on that toe, anyway) that started to bleed and I had to bandage it, sticking it out from the covers because even the sheet hurt, and my feet were cold to boot, which put me in a bad state of mind going to sleep. (ha, "to boot.") It could be worse, but I'd like it better.

So I pray my usual short prayer to get started in the morning, all in bad attitude, step out of my bed, and limp to get dressed.

I take the dog out after putting my coffee on. It smells "funny" out. I live in the boonies, so I'm not used to "funny" smells. Almost a chemical smell. I can't figure it out, which gets me to thinking negative thoughts. It's not skunk, cows, horses or even my dog smelling.Not the usual organic smells that I have learned are the "norm." It's something else I don't recognize. I come back in the house. I forgot to put in the thing that holds the coffee filter, so my coffee pot is a mess and what did go through is weak and crummy, full of grounds. I drink it anyway, and read my paper, crunching my coffee. Maybe the smell outside will go away.

My youngest son is a senior in HS this year. He awakened with a sore throat this morning and barely was speaking. I made him some tea and honey and dosed him up with meds and sent the poor kid to school. I'll be thinking of him all day. He is taking an EMS course this year and will learn something else new to rescue someone. Who takes care of those who take care of the world? Now you know. A woman at home with a bad attitude( and a chemical smell outside) who is randomly writing in her blog as she crunches her coffee.

I have four boys who each have a great sense of humor. They can make me laugh when I'm standing on the cliff's edge. This morning in my bad attitude jacket I got to thinking about them and missing how they were always here to drop funny lines and jolt me out of bad attitudes. Now they are in the world talking others out of having bad days. I was just starting to think I had done nothing for the world in my lifetime and that I was wasting away in this "place" (which I have a bad attitude about this "place," too.) But as I watched my youngest slip out the door to make his classmates and teachers laugh another day, even though he felt not-so-good, I realized I'm not in the grave yet and I've got four guys out there brightening their own corners.

That's when I saw this photo. It's of my two youngest boys at my soon-to-be 93-year-old Grandmother's house in Tennessee back several years ago(when she lived at home, not in the nursing home.) Max thought it was funny when my Grandmother gave him this jacket. Instead of getting all out of whack about it, he was laughing. And he always had this attitude that he would "grow into it." So, I suppose I need to try on the jacket of good attitude, laugh that it's too big for me today, but I'll "grow into it." Just accept it.

And with that thought I'm ready to write some more today, me, in my too-big for-me Good Attitude Jacket,which I'm trying to grow into.


I wrote this post on another one of my blogs in August 2008. Funny how times rarely change. I feel the same today, still trying to "grow into that good attitude jacket." I'll keep working on it and hope that you do, too.